Bengaluru: Karnataka High Court feels it appropriate to introduce an age limit for using social media. This would be just like the legal age for drinking alcohol. A division bench of Justices G Narendar and Vijaykumar A Patil made this observation. They were hearing an appeal by X Corp (formerly Twitter) challenging the single judge order of June 30 which had dismissed its plea to the takedown orders issued by the MeiT).
Under Section 69A of the IT Act between February 2, 2021 and February 28, 2022, MeiTY had issued 10 Government Orders directing Twitter to block 1,474 accounts, 175 Tweets, 256 URLs and one hashtag.
Twitter challenged the orders, related to 39 of these URLs. “Ban social media. A lot of good will come. Today’s school-going children are so addicted to it. I think there should be an age limit such as in Excise rules,” Justice G Narendar noted during the hearing for this.
The court further observed that “children may be 17 or 18. But do they have the maturity to judge what is in the interest of the nation? Not only on social media, but even on the Internet things should be removed, it corrupts the mind. The government should consider bringing in an age limit for the use of social media,” he added.
The court had also imposed a cost of Rs 50 lakh on X Corp.
In argument, X Corp’s counsel said that MeiTY had not informed the users about blocking their tweets and accounts. Even the company was forbidden from informing them. The court recommended that the government might need to make some adjustments to the regulations accordingly. The company should not be left in a vulnerable position.
The court however maintained that X Corp “cannot be given the right to judge the content. If the content says Apple a day keeps the doctor away, you will interpret that as being against the doctor and the interest of the nation?”
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